Focusing

It's widely recognized that fundamentally new strategies are needed
to address the challenges facing our world; Focusing
- a simple means to listen to our embodied wisdom - offers one such
strategy. Focusing can teach people how to call on their own experience
to address individual and social challenges, heal conflicts and to
develop confidence in their own abilities.

Changes Groups draw on Focusing and empathic Listening to strengthen
and empower grassroots social movements. The first Changes Group emerged
in 1970 to support the Vietnam
War protests. Changes groups and Focusing have been used around
the world ever since, notably in the traumatic situations that exist
in Afghanistan
and El Salvador.

What is Focusing?

Focusing is an experiential process developed at the University of
Chicago by Eugene Gendlin in the early 1960s based on research into
the key factors needed for successful psychotherapy. Those who could
be in touch with their inner body sense, which Gendlin calls the 'felt
sense' were more successful in therapy regardless of the method of
therapy. But Focusing has immense value outside therapy and is easy
to learn. Focusing can reduce collective and individual psychological
suffering and facilitates community building. It does this by teaching
people how to:

find small next steps of positive action as individuals and as
groups;

make decisions that ‘sit right’ for them, rather than
simply obeying leaders:

resolve personal and collective trauma;

speak from a deeply personal level that undercuts ethnic and
cultural divisions and mediates diversity form a wider bodily sense
of their whole present situation so that they are not re-traumatized
by strong emotions.

Changes Groups in Transition Towns

It’s obvious how valuable Focusing and Changes Groups can be
for the Transition Towns movement, but here’s a few suggestions
based on examples from the Focusing
Changes webpage:

Going to a movie together and then sharing our Felt Senses can
add another dimension to the conversation; a Changes group meeting
after watching The Age of Stupid could be very powerful.

The Group can support members going through difficult stresses,
like dealing with eco-collapse anxiety.

Listening/Focusing skills can be useful in working through out
interpersonal conflicts arising during group decision making.

The Focusing Community model

The Focusing Community model for supportive community teaches two
basic skills, Listening and Focusing, and shows how to use them for
personal growth, helping others, and resolving conflicts in relationships
and groups. It relies upon the mutual exchange of peer counseling
turns. These are useful skills in personal growth, work, and political
action situations.

The exchange of Listening/Focusing turns creates an atmosphere of
respect and empathy, which is basic to community building. The model
has been developed in interaction with reevaluation co-counseling
(Jackins, 1975), Rosenberg's (1983) nonviolent communication, and
the Quaker meeting format for consensus. It combines aspects of these
models with the client-centered/ existential work of Carl Rogers (1975)
on empathic listening and Eugene Gendlin (1981) on experiential focusing.

In its simplest form, the model involves sitting down with one to
ten friends, reading a manual on starting a supportive community (McGuire,
1981), and practicing Listening and Focusing skills. Each person has
an equal turn as the helper (Listener) and the helpee (Focuser). During
five to ten practice sessions participants learn to use the skills,
not only for personal growth, but for conflict resolution in relationships
and decision-making in groups.

People who exchange Listening/ Focusing turns also quickly find
themselves becoming bonded together into a supportive community, which
reaches into many aspects of their everyday living and enables them
to be more politically responsive.

The personal growth skills stressed at a Focusing Community are
not a luxury but a kind of psychological literacy that should be basic
equipment for every human being. One skill practiced is Focusing:
becoming aware of and responsible for one's own feelings and implicit
bodily knowledge. Focusing is a way out of the irresponsibility that
comes from blaming uncontrollable, "unconscious motivations"
for one's behavior.

The other skill is Listening: being able to set aside stereotypes
and prejudices and to meet another human being through empathy. Listening
is a way of bridging the gaps in understanding that lie at the base
of polarized and seemingly irresolvable conflicts.

Listening is the most valuable tool one can have on hand when wishing
to change attitudes within a culture. A persuasive discussion with
an everyday person about nuclear power, conservation, racism, sexism,
or another cause will go more smoothly if first you attempt to hear
that person out on his or her view. Then, having felt heard, the person
will be more willing to hear your alternative position. If threat
runs high again, a return to Listening can defuse a potentially explosive
situation. Listening/Focusing skills are also essential for maintaining
cohesion within social movement groups.

While Listening/Focusing can be practiced by as few as two people
exchanging turns, it's better to have at least three, so that someone
can act as observer and give feedback. Typically, a small group of
four-to-six people practice Listening/Focusing together, each having
a 10-20 minute turn. It takes about ten 1 and a half to 2 hour sessions
to learn Listening well enough so that it will become available in
less structured, everyday situations. The manual, Focusing In Community,
gives detailed instructions for practicing Listening. The author has
very generously given permission for me to pass on copies of this
manual to Transition Towns activists; for details, see Kathleen N.
McGuire's article, The
FocusingCommunity. If you would like a copy please contact me.

Interpersonal processing

Listening/ Focusing skills can be used to resolve conflict, often
with the use of a third person as a listening facilitator. Whenever
two people have an irresolvable tension, they can sit down for the
exchange of empathic listening turns on the matter. The addition of
the Focusing skill allows each participant to go below the level of
communicating the already-known and into the deeper levels of the
self that are involved in the conflict.

Collaborative decision-making

Adding Listening/ Focusing skills to traditional consensus decision-making
methods opens up new possibilities for conflict resolution. Often,
if a person can get listened to on his or her emotional investment
in a particular position, something will emerge that will allow the
person to see the situation from a slightly different angle. Or, as
the group really hears someone's deep reasons for a particular position,
someone in the group may suddenly see a new solution that encompasses
everybody's needs. Having Listening / Focusing at a decision-making
meeting is very much like having the services of a kaleidoscope. A
slight turn of the problem through Listening and Focusing, and a whole
new way of looking arise.